There are a number of things I’d recommend against, taking selfies with bears for example, but allow me to add another to the list: Playing in a football tournament the day before a triathlon. Yeller and I, for some unknown reason, decided to embark on this undertaking, and our bodies are not pleased with us.
Not pleased at all…
A friend posted on the demon that is Facebook about needing a few bodies to fill out a team for a charity football event that took place at Qualcomm stadium. Considering we raise money for the charity, (the CCFA), we figured “why not?” We knew we had a tri the next day, but we figured we’d just take it easy, not push too hard and just have fun. Surely we wouldn’t need to sprint up and down the field, and a friend who took part the previous year said overall competitiveness was rather low, so we figured it would be an easy, fun day at the stadium.
Of course, that’s not exactly how it went.
We got there early enough to say hi to a few friends working the event and meet our “team.” I use the word “team”, just because the definition fits, but we were really just 7 people who figured we’d run around for a while. Yeller and I are familiar with the sport, as were a few others, the rest knew very very little, so yea, disadvantage. The games were 7 on 7, so we ended up playing ironman style (fitting) and never coming off the field, but the games were only 25 minutes long, so we didn’t think too much into it.
We were up first, and if that game set a precedent for things to come, it’d be great. No real unnecessary contact, and we blew them out of the water. The second game? Not so much… the team was supposed to be “Weekend Warrior” types, but they weren’t. Bit too serious, and as a result there was a LOT of unnecessary contact with guys being overly aggressive for the ball. We were already a bit worn down from the first game, and they had subs while we didn’t, so that game didn’t go well.
The final game we played was against a competitive team, and they were also WAY more aggressive than needed. I got slammed into more than a few times by people who were a touch more aggressive than needed for 7 on 7 flag football. Yeller had quite a few guys slam into her a LOT harder than necessary, which led to her chewing them out on more than one occasion. 🙂 Again, the game didn’t go that well for us, they had subs, we didn’t, they were hyper-competitive freak shows, we were just trying to have fun and not get hurt. All said, we had a good time and had fun hanging out with our teammates and friends who were there.
Aside from the game, Witt Lincoln was hanging out letting people test drive a few of their vehicles in exchange for potential leads. A perk of the test drives was they were donating $50 a person to the CCFA, as long as you drove a specific vehicle, and then hopped in another. Yeller and I took two around the stadium, and managed to snag a cool Benjamin for the cause. 🙂
Also, it was my first experience being in Qualcomm stadium, and I now understand why people are clamoring for new digs for the Chargers. Calling it a dump is offensive to actual garbage dumps nation-wide. It’s rusty, rickety, ugly, and just in bad shape. The field was good, well groomed, and it was fun seeing the stadium from a player perspective, but let’s be real, the stadium is terrible. I don’t really like the whole “people pay for the billion dollar stadium for the multi-billion dollar machine that is the NFL” idea, but if the city doesn’t step up, the Chargers may be the LA Chargers soon.
On the triathlon front… well… I was fully intent on making this whole post about the football games and the triathlon, but then stuff happened. Because of said “Stuff”, I’m going to break the tri out into it’s own post. Stay tuned!